On June 1, 2025, the operation that night was bold and deceptive. Ukrainian forces infiltrated deep into Russian territory with trucks disguised as civilian cargo. The targets were five Russian air bases. The operation was called "Operation Spiderweb."
That day, Ukrainian forces remotely launched small drones hidden inside the trucks. The drones rushed toward Russian strategic bombers worth hundreds of billions of won. Ukraine said it "successfully struck Russian air bases, causing $7 billion (about 9 trillion won) in damage." From more than 5,000 kilometers away, drones costing only millions of won rattled the heart of the Russian military.
The Russia-Ukraine war is also called the "first drone war." Drones and software have diminished the stature of tanks and bombers, and the battlefield has turned into a stage for technological competition.
The paradox of war accelerating technological progress is creating an unexpected surge of cash flowing into Ukraine's defense startups. Amid the tragedy of a war now in its fourth year, Ukraine has earned a new nickname: the "Silicon Valley of the defense industry."
Sim Im-bo, honorary president of the KSEAS (former professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and former professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Dong-A University), said, "The reason Ukraine was able to achieve extreme efficiency relative to expense through drones is that it has built solid software capabilities over more than 30 years as Europe's IT outsourcing base," adding, "Software capabilities in Korea's electronics and mechanical industries (algorithms and machine learning, etc.) are keywords that cannot be emphasized enough, from physical AI to defense AI."
Strategic weapon amid absolute inferiority
When Russia's invasion began in 2022, Ukraine determined it could not defeat Russia in a head-on fight and focused national resources on aerial unmanned power (drones). The Ukrainian government brought in not only private IT corporations but also gaming and maker communities, and hundreds of drone startups and volunteer networks emerged.
In the early days of the war, Ukraine's drone manufacturing technology amounted to modifying commercial drones. But over time, drones became "strategic weapons."
First-person-view drones (FPV) that mount video cameras and explosives on hobbyist mini drones proved powerful as "suicide drones." Long-range drones with ranges of hundreds to thousands of kilometers, as well as sea and underwater drones, were developed one after another to attack Russia's Black Sea Fleet and submarines.
In 2023, Ukraine added unmanned aerial companies to every brigade, and in 2024 it also launched the world's first organization dedicated to drone operations and tactics development, the Unmanned Systems Forces (USF).
In November 2025, Ukraine's top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said, "We use drones in about 60% of attacks on Russia."
The New York Times said the battlefield in 2025 looks completely different from three years ago. Fiber-optic cables crisscross the roughly 750-mile (about 1,200-kilometer) front-line fields in Ukraine, and drones hunt individual soldiers.
Moving tanks has now become extremely dangerous. A drone costing a few hundred dollars can destroy a multimillion-dollar tank in an instant.
War economy of Europe’s coding factory
Before the war, Ukraine was called "Europe's coding factory." As of 2021, 280,000 to 300,000 highly skilled IT workers were active, carrying out complex outsourcing projects for Western corporations. The heavy concentration of software developers was one reason Ukraine rapidly advanced its drone manufacturing technology.
Existing Ukrainian IT corporations also rolled out products tailored to a wartime posture. SoftServe supported ambulance retrofits and cyber defense, MacPaw distributed security apps, and Eleks built the Ministry of National Defense's medical information system. Ajax Systems developed an air raid alert app that served as a lifeline for the public.
If traditional defense development followed a yearslong "waterfall" approach, Ukraine switched to a weeks-long "agile" model that develops products in short cycles and incorporates feedback.
In 2023, the Ukrainian government created a platform called "Brave1" to gather ideas and innovative corporations that could be used in defense. The platform provides government subsidies to promising defense technology projects and includes an online procurement function that connects military units with manufacturers.
A pragmatism of "use it if it's usable, even if imperfect" shortened the weapon certification process to a matter of weeks. Instead of expensive military specifications, they combined commercially available parts to slash expense to about one one-hundredth.
As of 2025, more than 2,000 teams have registered on Brave1, and hundreds of solutions have already been validated at the front. The technologies have expanded to include drones, ground robots, electronic warfare, cybersecurity, and missile development.
Week-based innovation structure
As startups, front-line units, and the government formed a real-time feedback loop, capabilities for electronic warfare countermeasures, autonomous flight, and swarm functions were brought into combat within weeks to months.
Front-line soldiers relay bugs and improvements via messenger, and developers roll out updates within days. In drone production facilities shown to the media, 3D printers ran around the clock, and engineers immediately patched software on site. New payloads underwent test flights within days.
Oleksandr Yakovenko, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Ukraine's fourth-year drone startup TAF Industries, said, "Operators in the trenches and engineers in the company lab are directly connected."
Every day, soldiers at the front explain why they failed in electronic warfare, how they survived, which attacks succeeded, and which attempts failed, and the company immediately reflects that feedback. The company shipped 370,000 FPVs to front-line units in 2024 alone.
[Interview] Young entrepreneur Oleksandr Yakovenko, TAF Industries CEO who made drones a battlefield game-changer
In this process, "civil-military fusion," in which civilian technology is rapidly transferred to defense, accelerated. In July, Ukraine also rolled out a plan to test foreign defense corporations' new weapons at the front line—"Test it in Ukraine." Corporations send their new weapons to Ukraine, Ukrainian forces use the products, and then provide feedback to the corporations.
As of 2024, about 2.2 million drones of all types, including more than 1 million FPVs, were produced in Ukraine. The 2025 production target was 4 million units. That far exceeds Europe's total drone output.
A weakness of Ukraine's drone industry is "supply chain risk." It relies heavily on China for key components such as motors, batteries, and communications modules. Although production capacity itself has expanded, disruptions in parts procurement can immediately halt mass production.
Big money is pouring in
As Ukraine's drone operations striking Moscow, rear Russian air bases, and Black Sea Fleet bases were disclosed in succession, Western attention turned to Ukraine's defense industry. Ukraine began to be dubbed a "drone superpower" and the "Silicon Valley of the defense industry."
In particular, capital inflows into Ukrainian defense startups are increasing. It is a sign that Ukrainian defense startups are moving beyond a phase of relying on wartime subsidies and donations to building self-sustaining fundraising capacity.
According to preliminary figures from Brave1, in 2025 more than 50 Ukrainian defense tech startups secured over $105 million in combined venture and angel investment.
Representative examples include Swarmer ($15 million), Tencore ($3.74 million), and Dropla ($2.75 million). Europe's defense startups raised a total of about $200 million this year, with Ukrainian startups accounting for a significant share.
U.S.-based MITS Capital and Green Flag Ventures, among others, established local footholds in Ukraine and expanded investment. It became known that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt invested in a Ukrainian drone startup through the D3 fund.
Germany's Rheinmetall set up a joint venture with a Ukrainian state-owned defense corporation in 2024 and is building four factories locally. The plants will quickly repair foreign equipment and send it to the front. The plan is to produce armored vehicles later on.
Türkiye's Baykar built a large drone factory near Kyiv. Baykar provides airframe manufacturing technology, and Ukraine supplies its aircraft engine technology.
U.S. company Northrop Grumman signed a joint production agreement for medium-caliber munitions, and KNDS, a French-German joint venture, established KNDS Ukraine.
Anna Hvozdiiar, Vice Minister at the Ministry of National Defense of Ukraine, emphasized at KIEF (Kyiv International Economic Forum) 2025, "Ukraine has emerged as the driving force behind the transformation of the global defense industry," adding, "The world is paying attention to the systems and experience of even small manufacturers that make a real difference at the front."
Since 2023, Ukraine has also held the International Defense Industries Forum to promote defense technology. About 2,000 people from more than 20 countries attended this year's forum.
Bruegel, a European think tank, projected in a report that after the war Ukraine will establish itself as "Europe's arsenal." That is because of low production expense, a skilled technical workforce, and vast combat data accumulated in real combat.
+Plus Point
Ukraine has rewritten the textbook of modern warfare, but the national finances have effectively reached the limit line. The war has entered its fourth year, and most U.S. financial support has been cut off.
On Dec. 19, the European Union (EU) agreed to provide interest-free loans totaling €90 billion (about 156 trillion won) to Ukraine for 2026–2027. The concern is that if Ukraine's fiscal crisis is left unaddressed, Russia's threat could spread across Europe.
Recently, Russia's drone counterattacks have also been formidable. At night, it repeatedly deploys dozens to hundreds of drones simultaneously to drain Ukraine's air defense radar.
In particular, this year Russia has massively deployed fiber-cable drones that are hardly affected by jamming, precisely striking Ukraine's supply routes, rear vehicles, and armored vehicles at low altitude. As the drone flies, a thin fiber-optic cable unreels, maintaining a physical connection to the controller.
The United States is holding talks with Russia and Ukraine for negotiations to end the war. On Dec. 24, Ukraine discussed with the United States a plan to end the war by freezing the current Russia-Ukraine front line and launching talks on establishing a demilitarized zone (DMZ).